#Keith Skretch

[jimrmoore]

Vaudevisuals interview with Mallory Catlett - "Decoder: Ticket that Exploded"

Vaudevisuals interview with Mallory Catlett – “Decoder: Ticket that Exploded”

MONDAY JULY 8th, 2019, 9:00 pm

Restless Productions, an Obie and Bessie Award-winning theater company led by director Mallory Catlett, presents ‘Decoder: Ticket that Exploded‘, the second installment of their multimedia-infused trilogy based on William Burroughs‘ NOVA series which predicts our current online life.

Created and directed by Mallory Catlett

Performed by Jim Findlay and G Lucas…

[k00272842]

Animation Task 1

Strata-cut animation;Waves of Grain

This is a two minute animation by filmmaker Keith Skretch who planed a block of wood in tiny increments and took photographs through out the process. The final video reveals a strange sense of motion as the camera moves through the block revealing curves similar to ripples of water.

I really like the way the grains appear to move like water,going in different directions crossing each other to a point where they from new lines,these are very strong characteristic of waves in my opinion.

[lachwp]

ADAD1001 Assessment 2 Time Based Collaborative Project

Our main theme is growth as well as the passage of time and juxtaposition. We were inspired by the course themes ‘editing’ and ‘perception’ as well as works such as Soda Jerk’s ‘After The Rainbow’

and Keith Skretch’s ‘Waves of Grain.’

We used these works as a jumping-off point due to the creative way in which they not only represented time, but utilized it in a way such that it was integral to the work.

Realising we were all the same age, we decided to do a retrospective of our lives by contrasting the culture of a given year (represented by the #1 billboard song) with significant events of said year (represented by contemporaneous news clips).

Originally, we envisioned this project as a video collage of various news clips backed by a soundtrack of pop music. However, due to technological constraints we changed the medium to a slideshow-esque format where each year is represented by four panels playing simultaneously. This turned out to have its own artistic advantages.

By juxtaposing music existing in the artistic realm with events that occured in history, we wanted to produce irony achieving an emotional and aesthetic response in the viewer. Our piece explores the evolution of culture since the dawn of the internet age, as well as what it means to be Australian in an increasingly global, Americanised society. We hope that it illicts a variety of different responses from its audience.

References

[theatredirectors]

Mallory Catlett

Hometown?

I don’t really have a hometown. I’m a navy kid, but I was born in Lemore, California. The irony of my life is that I have lived in the same apartment in New York City longer than I have lived anyplace else. 

Where are you now? 

NYC – Hell’s Kitchen.

What's your current project?

DECODER: Ticket That Exploded at Pioneer Works, July 8 at 9pm. It’s about this series of experimental prescient novels – the NOVA trilogy – that William Burroughs wrote in the 60’s about space aliens who take over human bodies to destroy the planet. I like to try and reconstruct difficult works of literature in the performance context. It’s how I come to understand the work itself and why and how it has meaning in my life. The piece is my conversation with Burroughs about my current inability to live in my body in an internet-addicted age. How do I use the technology we have created without getting eaten alive by it. DECODER is sort of a manual of techniques to build up your resistance to the daily brainwashing. But it is also really beautiful and crazy and manages to turn what Burroughs called the image prison into something that isn’t mind-numbing. Its a concert with live improvised imagery that is funny and terrifying with Burroughs’ signature energetic language that leaps off the page and down your throat. Myself, tape DJ and sound designer G Lucas Crane, interaction designer Ryan Holsopple, video designer Keith Skretch and performer Jim Findlay have created this analog-to-digital cutup machine that is both DIY and high tech. So what you are watching is sound and image mostly being generated live in real time. 

Why and how did you get into theatre?

I was a dancer who encountered theater in high school at North Carolina School of the Arts. Many of my friends were actors so I got interested by going to see there shows. I wanted to work with words. Language is a mystery to me, so I never get tired of the challenges it presents. 

What is your directing dream project? 

Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

What kind of theatre excites you? 

Something that isn’t a play. Something that leaves me a lot space to think and feel on my own terms. Something that takes the conversation deeper than I am prepared to go. Something I don’t really understand and is hard to follow by design. Not out of carelessness but out of a desire to articulate something that might be impossible to say. 

What do you want to change about theatre today? 

I want the job to be less punishing. I wish we could articulate its value differently and find easier crossover work in other areas of life. Single-payer health care would really help. I think we should try to change things that make life easier in general, not just for artists. I would love for our natural alliance with lower income people to be stronger. To try and overcome many of the obstacles to achieve better solidarity. 

What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA? 

My approach was that I didn’t want to go into debt, because I knew I would be making my own work and that would be a real hindrance to me. I lived and worked in NYC for a while, then went to an interdisciplinary school – The School for Contemporary Arts at SFU in Vancouver – for my MFA. It was mostly free. And it was mostly self-directed. My classmates were from other disciplines. I didn’t want to go through a “program” or be taught a “method” – I just wanted to find my own process. There are probably a lot of hidden assumptions on my part in the above sentences and I am not sure my experience is relevant to others. Other than it might be worthwhile to think about the word “professional” long and hard in making your decision. 

Who are your theatrical heroes? 

Joan Littlewood, Pina Bausch, Charles Ludlam, John Jesurun, Melanie Joseph, Ralph Lemon, Angélica Liddell.

Any advice for directors just starting out?

Come to terms with how you wield power so that your work isn’t about control and/or knowing. I think there is enough of that in the theater and it prevents you from getting deeper into what you are doing. 

Plugs!

DECODER: Ticket That Exploded on Monday, July 8 at 9pm at Pioneer Works, 159 Pioneer Street Red Hook, Brooklyn - tickets here: https://pioneerworks.org/programs/decoder-ticket-that-exploded/. 

This work will also return next season as part of the DECODER trilogy at the Chocolate Factory. 

Photo by Maria Baranova

[motiongraphictrend]

Waves of Grain

[annagramasinspiration-blog]

Images by Keith Skretch Sound by Ennio Morricone, "The Big Gundown" To create this strata-cut animation, I planed down a block of wood one layer at a time, photographing it at each pass. The painstaking process revealed a hidden life and motion in the seemingly static grain of the wood, even as the wood itself was reduced to a mound of sawdu (via Waves of Grain timelapse video of wood being planed | Video | Gear)

[sweetbeets]

Waves of Grain

[rubberhoseanimation]

"Waves of Grain"- Keith Skretch

Off topic tuesday! (or wednesday...) "To create this strata-cut animation, I planed down a block of wood one layer at a time, photographing it at each pass. The painstaking process revealed a hidden life and motion in the seemingly static grain of the wood, even as the wood itself was reduced to a mound of sawdust." Life moves yo.

[handeyesupply]

Incredible, soothing stop motion animation of a strata-cut block of wood, made by filmmaker Keith Skretch. Watch the "waves" that travel though the inside of trees.